Sounds suppression, XXL bed flatness, and other musings

I see your electrical conduit in the back, I ran separate conduits , 1 for the Shapeoko and another one for the router and vacuum, I have the computer plugged into the normal shop circuit. Also a pic of my dedicated ground circuit with a 220 dryer plug so I can’t plug it into a live circuit.






the last one is my “2$ shoe buffer” I set up for buffing small parts, see the button at the floor by my shoe? My son said I’m nuts, doesn’t he know he is always right?..

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I have two 20 amp shop circuits, one for the north wall and ceiling and one for the south wall. For my XXL I only use two outlets, one for the vacuum and one for my power conditioner/UPS. Everything besides the vacuum plugs into the UPS. I ran 3 conductor loose wire through the conduit even though some said I could use the conduit itself(I didn’t want something as stupid as a loose screw killing my ground).

Dan

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Update! T-track installed, installed threaded inserts in waste board, cut 3/4" MDF filler boards, drilled and counterbored via XXL, and got everything bolted together with 1/4-20 bolts. Pretty sure it could survive re-entry from low Earth orbit! Musing on if I want to install more 1/4-20 inserts on the filler boards, I’ve got tons of them? Want to do that before tramming flat if I go that way.

Thoughts, ideas, musings?

Dan

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I obviously need more T-Track for my BIG wasteboard. Nice work. And you know I am stealing your vac boom idea.

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I’m ready to start the first production run and now I want a new stand, vacuum system and of course a vacuum table, all is working fine or good enough for now but now I want a new stand, a new… guess I’ll wait til after this run and than I’ll see if I still want it, but of course I will… This forum is so encouraging and there are so many good and available ideas , oh wait…here’s an idea (i thought of towards myself ) how about I use this machine to make some money that I can use to make the machine better… how much better it would be to just switch off the vacuum and remove and replace it with the next panel no clamping and unclamping and cut cut cut… now that is progress or will be progress. Thanks for the musing’abilities, Jude

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I used to be really into air guns, not “BB guns”, air guns, like the kind you charge with a SCUBA tank. After collecting some 20-30 guns, and looking for the next “keeper” a friend of mine told me,“Just keep buying until I tell you to stop!”. It was pretty sound advice, haha!!! About the time I had turned my 20-30 lower end guns into 6-8 really high end ($1000-$3000 range) “keepers” I realized how much money I had into that hobby, not including the ones I bought high and sold low. Thing is there wasn’t anything I hadn’t already owned, or didn’t want to own, and I could only stare at them for so long, but I enjoyed collecting them. Somewhere in there “life happened” and I was lucky enough to sell everything off pretty quick, at a loss of course, but I really enjoyed what I had as long as I had it. I’ve had my XXL for almost a year now. I don’t even want to guess what I’ve spent on endmills, materials, doodads and rinkydinks, and I’ve yet to make anything that I could sell for profit, but I have enjoyed the time spent piecing it all together, watching the motors spin, the “occasional” mistake that causes the whole works to burp and bellow. As I’m sitting here I’ve been watching my machine resurface the new waste board for an hour or so and I’m pretty dumb happy just listening to it whirl away, making tiny 0.4mm deep cuts as it goes, bliss!!! Pretty soon I hope to make my very first real finished product, a sign for my shop in curly maple. It’s only taken a year, a dwindling bank account, and hours of putting it together, pretty cool in my book:)

Dan

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Thanks Dan, I really needed that, sanity and reality are not the same thing nor do they go hand in hand. Happiness is the best medicine and sometimes you just need to think about the journey instead of the finish line. I for one don’t want to finish, I’d rather keep peddling along looking for the next hill top. Guess I was trying to hard to make sense of the whole deal… I mean I didn’t buy it just to make money, I bought it for the challange, well I got I challange and I should be happy. Tomorrow morning I think I will tram the surface again just for the fun of it. A nice shiny surface is quite an accomplishment after all. Jude

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Back before my current desk job I was the Prototyping Shop Supervisor and my fondest memory of being in that shop was when everyone else would go home, I’d usually save myself a small lathe project. I would set that thing up for a nice long cut, making as perfect a curlyQ string as I could without breaking it, and just watch it turn and and make chip(s). That was several years ago when home life wasn’t real good, my commute home meant sitting in 2-3MPH traffic for an hour, and just watching that thing go was probably the only thing that kept my head somewhat in tact. I could call the now ex-wife, say I was working a little late, watch that thing spin, clear my head, and avoid most of the slow traffic. It was like watching old war movies on TV, except it took a little concentration to make sure nothing went out of whack, engaged, but relaxed. Enjoy the surfacing, mine just finished but I think I need to take off about 0.1mm more because the machine missed a low spot in one corner about as big as my hand, that will be for tomorrow;-)

Sanity and reality are absolutely two different things, I like to dabble around somewhere in the middle;-)

Dan

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Resurfacing went wonderful this morning, nice and relaxing… I don’t remember what I did last time but the back corner was off by almost 1/2 mm, no wonder the depths never seemed right. Not the Z axis, it’s the surface. Nice practice engraving was a result. Thanks Dan, Jude

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Got the mount in today,ill try to post a pic later.

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Thanks again Dan,I got it all mounted,I set it up so it can swivel between the s3 and my triple setup.Worked out very well

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That looks really good Mark!

Funny, you have a similar set up to my garage and office all in one. I don’t have RC cars, I have helicopters and RC gliders, but we both have guitars!

Dan

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WOW!!! Now that is impressive Mark, I’m not jealous, I’m not jealous, I’ll just keep telling myself that, I am happy with my setup which is what matters, but your’s is really nice…Jude

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Cool - I like that but am afraid of the weight of my new dust boot setup to clear the 4.2" spindle and hookup to a 4" pipe. I could make that holder on top for the hose out of hdpe maybe… Always cool ideas to see around what people come up with! Also on the XXL table, I was forever bothered by not only gaps, but arching in the straps so I actually mounted similar to grumpa with taking out void spaces and shimmed like crazy down to sheets of paper to try and level the alum extrusion surface I put on it. From there bolting my bench / table to the wall had made it magnitudes more rigid. I may be actually moving the outside wall a bit when jogging my XXL since it’s soooo jerky start / stopping (plus the added weight/inertia of course). Hope it’s all running well!

It’s been running great! I’ve actually been deep into a couple projects, but unfortunately haven’t posted the latest ones (gifts for my nieces, that shipped out today and I took no pictures, duh me…). The bed is really flat now and I’ve been doing some engraving that’s come out nicely, with both spring loaded and rotary engravers in acrylic (cutting all of the way through acrylic without leaving an edge and not burying the bit in the wasteboard will give you a pretty good signal of flatness). My only real beef with my current setup is the loss of Z-axis. Longer bits make this a bit tough with the 3/4" + 3/4" wasteboard stackup. I actually killed a project the other night because Z likes to raise before starting and it hit the top (thought limits/switches would prevent this, guess not), made an ugly noise, then plunged while moving to the first cut and buried the bit into my work piece during rapid. I put the bit deeper in the collet, threw away my project and started over, and it ran fine after that. Ruined a nice piece of curly maple, but lesson learned…if Z zero doesn’t give the machine enough headroom, like 10mm above Z zero to top of Z=axis I would guess, then all heck breaks loose. I’m using VCarve Desktop for GCode and CM4 to drive, not sure which one is to blame for the crash.

The “Dust Boom” works pretty well, the only thing I want to add is a gate so I can switch from boom to a separate hose to vacuum up the excess around the shop. I have about 20 more feet of hose, just haven’t figured out how to make a valve/splitter for it from PVC pipe, but I’ll get there eventually, having fun just making stuff after a year of futzing around with getting the machine set up!

Happy CNCing, that router of yours looks like a beast!

Dan

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Sounds great especially with just getting to actually use it for the intended use! My problem is I’ll always find some way to be trying something else to put me off track but it’s all fun and learning in the end. I’ve never heard of a spring loaded engraver and will have to check more out for Acrylic as I’d like to make a nice edge lit sign someday too since they look pretty simple. As for the dust gate, I just am setting up similar, trying to have a hard pipe running near some machines that I can swap off too or also goto more shop cleaning/sweeping attachments. Keep having fun and creating!!!